Review: Curse "Characters are Irresistible and So Are The Flashes Of Humor That Brighten The Macabre Doings"

Book review: The Curse of the Blue FigurineBellairs, author of a prize-winning suspense trilogy…[that include] The House with a Clock in Its Walls, tells a fourth spellbinding story her about a nice boy whose one slip puts him in thrall to an evil ghost. Johnny Dixon, an orphan, lives with his grandparents whose friend is irascible but kind Professor Childermass, schooled in folklore. The professor says that the unquiet spirit of a priest, Father Baart, haunts the local church and Johnny, finding a strange blue figurine in the church basement and keeping it, learns that the Baart legend, reeking of horrors, is no rumor. The boy is drawn into a world of madness as the vents rush on to a crisis on a mountaintop where the ghost has Johnny at his mercy, and Professor Childermass fights against terrible odds to save him. Bellairs's characters are irresistible and so are the flashes of humor that brighten the macabre doings.

Publishers Weekly
Vol. 223, No. 6,
February 11, 1983, p. 70.